Talk:List of designated heritage railway stations of Canada

Defintion

@Julius177: Do former stations that have been relocated, repurposed, or from which the tracks have been removed, qualify? eg. Port Moody https://www.historicplaces.ca/en/rep-reg/place-lieu.aspx?id=2562&pid=0 DMBanks1 (talk) 19:13, 21 April 2021 (UTC)

That's a good question. I would say yes, tentatively. I mused on it a bit myself while creating the list. Part of my motivation in creating this as a separate list from, e.g., List of railway stations in Canada, was to bring both attention and clarity to this specific federal designation on Wikipedia. I noticed that many station articles were categorized as (D)HRSC and I can't fault the editors when the Parks Canada website's directory lists those stations as designated under the act. My hope is that this list can ultimately work in concert with the Heritage Railway Stations Protection Act article to provide a more nuanced and information-rich reading experience than the category system alone. Unfortunately, the Monuments Board/Parks Canada directory (which this list draws information from) seems to be more a list of stations which have been designated at some point, rather than stations to which the protections of the HRSPA still definitively apply. This also seems to be why they have the disclaimer, "Only designated heritage railway stations that are still owned by a railway company under federal jurisdiction are subject to the Heritage Railway Stations Protection Act." This makes things a bit difficult for us as Wikipedians because there doesn't seem to be any source we can point to in most cases which definitively says, yes, this station is no longer under the protection of the act, and it's often difficult to find out who exactly owns a station building without doing original research. Because of this, I left much of my wording open-ended in this regard. My inclination is that article should err on the side of inclusion of stations like the example you gave, as unless we have a solid source explicitly saying so, it is a bit of a judgement call for us to say stations are no longer protected under the act, except in cases where it is completely obvious (e.g. demolished stations). Even then, there is certainly some value in noting somehow that stations designated under the act have been demolished, rather than them simply vanishing from the list. Another potential way to clarify the article could simply be to mimic the Parks Canada approach of listing all stations which have ever been designated, including (presumably) de-designated or even demolished stations. Julius177 (talk) 20:36, 21 April 2021 (UTC)

@Julius177: That being said, you might also want to consider adding the following heritage designation numbers: 1845 Fort Langley, 1927 Field, 2414 N. Vancouver, 3499 New Westminster, 4572 Glacier, 6632 Kelowna, 6702 Grand Forks, 6783 Penticton, 16063 Qualicum Beach, 17106 Vernon, and 18261 Port Alberni. I will leave it up to you to decide what to include. I find it strange that stations such as Agassiz, Castlegar, Midway, Waterfront, and Valemount have no clear designation. Hope, having a merely local designation is in danger of being demolished https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/hope-station-house-1.5986460 DMBanks1 (talk) 20:55, 21 April 2021 (UTC)

The Heritage Act only applies when the station is still owned by a Federally governed railroad. Once they sell it, it's technically still "designated" but has no legal protection. It's then up to the Province (or sometimes the municipality) to designate it. For example, the Orillia CN station no longer has train tracks, so it's not used for any railway-related activity. The City of Orillia designated it under Part IV of the Ontario Heritage Act. Oaktree b (talk) 23:11, 24 November 2022 (UTC)